Economists have long disagreed whether central banks, such as the U.S. Federal Reserve, should be guided by rules or by discretion in formulating monetary policy.
The world’s two most important central bankers both weighed in on the issue in recent days, and both came down on the side of discretion. But even these authoritative pronouncements are unlikely to end a disciplinary dispute that has gone on for 50 years.
Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan effectively devoted his entire speech to the issue at the Kansas City Fed’s annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo. Greenspan acknowledged critics’ beliefs that “such an approach to policy is too undisciplined — judgmental, seemingly discretionary and difficult to explain.”
“The Federal Reserve should, some conclude, attempt to be more formal in its operations by tying its actions solely to the prescriptions of a formal policy rule.”
He moved quickly, however, to assert his disagreement: “That any approach along these lines would lead to an improvement in economic performance, however, is highly doubtful.”
Just a few days later, Greenspan’s French counterpart, Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the Bank of France, voiced quite similar views. One can never trust something as important as monetary policy to any simple mathematical formula, argued Trichet, who is to take the helm of the European Central Bank in November.
No one in the popular press challenged the opinions of these two respected central bankers. That is not likely to cow advocates of objective rules among academic economists. The argument among economists about the relative merits of rules and discretion began in the 1950s.
THE ARGUMENTS
Both sides present a combination of practical and theoretical arguments for their positions. Discretion advocates generally follow John Maynard Keynes, who argued that government can and should manage inflation and unemployment by varying taxes, government spending and interest rates.
Economists who champion objective rules generally are monetarist followers of Milton Friedman or their intellectual heirs in the New Classical-Rational Expectations school of thought.
Both groups think that short-term monetary accelerating and braking will not only fail to stabilize output, prices and employment, but will also actually make the economic picture worse.
Keynes argued that when an economy slows and unemployment rises, a central bank should increase the money supply so as to lower interest rates. When inflation threatens, the bank should constrict money growth and thus raise interest rates. Paired with complementary actions on the taxing and spending front, such “counter-cyclical” policies would reduce harm from violent recessions or booms.
Monetarists pointed out that central banks don’t have any better information about the future course of economic activity than anyone else. Economists are famously bad at predicting when economies will shift from growth to recession or vice versa.
But monetary changes take a long time to affect the economy in any significant way. Waiting until a recession or inflation was clear might well mean that the stimulus or constriction would come too late and would make swings wider instead of narrower.
Allowing discretion introduced yet another element of uncertainty into the economy. Businesspeople contemplating making investments in new plants or equipment would not only have to make a judgment about how the economy would do, but they would also have to second-guess the Fed. Better to have a steady, predictable policy of letting the money supply grow at the same rate as the long-term growth of output.
That was the anti-discretion argument in the 1950s and 1960s.
In the following two decades, the New Classical analysts demonstrated that economic swings are random and inherently unpredictable. They demonstrated that Keynesian policies to reduce unemployment and inflation could end up perversely increasing both.
The repeated periods of slow growth in the 1950s in the United States and the great inflation from 1970-1982 in most industrialized countries took place under regimes of central bank discretion.
Rules would have been better, they argued. The anti-rule crowd responded that repeated economic simulations of these periods with rules substituted for discretion did not produce better outcomes. Moreover, the “slow but steady” money growth rule depended on some stability in how fast money circulated in an economy. Much evidence showed that this “velocity of circulation” fluctuated substantially.
MATTER OF CONTROL
Above the academic debate, real central bankers such as Trichet and Greenspan continue to make subjective judgments. One observer argues that the principal reason they do so is analogous to why we put flight controls in space capsules. During the Mercury program, it was clear that computers and ground controllers could implement most necessary maneuvers better than an astronaut on board.
The astronauts, however, refused to fly if they did not have some ability to control the capsule. The illusion of control provided psychological comfort and outweighed any objective evidence that computer or ground control was safer and more effective.
In a similar vein, voters and politicians like to maintain a myth of control. “We are taking action to reduce unemployment” is a powerful campaign claim even when probably not true.
No, the academic debate is not likely to end soon, regardless of what Greenspan says. Nor will central bankers in major countries soon entrust policy to a formula, regardless of how sophisticated.
© 2003 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.